a Little Sand, a little powder

Today in the Little Sands area we did not observe any avalanche activity. We toured up to 2000 m and dug a pit on an east-facing slope. The snowpack's top 20-30 cm was soft snow sitting on top of a surface hoar layer. Below that, the snowpack was well-settled and moist near the ground. We had no results on our extended column test (ECTX) and a resistant result on our compression test (CTM14 (RP) down 30cm on 9-12 mm surface hoar). The weather was mild; -1 at the staging area in the morning, and -5.6 at higher elevation when we dug into the snow. The wind was calm, making for a great day.